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Community Projects

Food Glorious Food! Photo tour of our Meals for the Homeless service.

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For over two years British Asian Christian Association have been providing free meals for homeless people, the economically deprived and refugees and asylum-seekers.  Our work began after Trustees became acutely aware of the growing homeless community in Ilford during a series of outreach events in Ilford Town Centre (click here).

You can read a full review of our ‘Meals for the Homeless’ project and watch videos (here).  It includes an account of how we grew the service by meeting the homeless on the streets were they took shelter.

Juliet and Hannah Chowdhry travelled to tents, mattresses in car parks and at the back of Ilford Exchange mall and many other locations to introduce our free service to the people that need it.

We can serve up to 40 people a day and with the help of partner groups such as Westminster Drug Project we are even able to provide free counselling  and were providing free lateral flow tests (click here).  The NHS also occasionally undertake hepatology tests at our centre (click here)

This month we continue to see a rise in  the number of visitors to our centre, which now includes members of  new migrants from Afghan and Ukrainian refugees communities.

Queues at our ‘Meals for the Homeless’ project continue to grow.

 

Some days hot meals are provided by 5 star restaurants such as Tabla who are located 100 yards from us and provide freshly cooked meals in ready to distribute packs.

Our reputation has grown massively in Ilford and restaurants and community groups continue to offer us support and help.  We also regularly remind The Welcome Centre, Refugee And Migrant Forum for East London (RAMFEL), Salvation Army and local churches and religious groups of our services so they can redirect people who need help.

Meet our newest partners Vishwa Hindu Parishad (UK). Moved by our work they have agreed to provide additional support every second Saturday. Our Volunteer Rajeshri is providing a copy of a letter of thanks from us to their group.
We provide drinks and Hot meals and try to obtain desert to – our thanks to Greggs Ilford.
Part of our offering is 50 meals a day given to Project Malachi run by the Salvation Army. So in total we are probably feeding more than 90 people in desperate need of food per day of our operation.
Hot meals are distributed as soon as we receive them. Our visitors appreciate the food so much they can queue from about two hours before we start distributing – this of course allows them to socialise soon and removes feelings of loneliness. It works for us as they get to have their food nice and hot.

We hope to do more at the centre but our food collections and deliveries require a lot of fuel.  We hope to obtain an electric vehicle to make this work more viable for the future and hope some of you can help make this happen.  Our current petrol vehicle is over 15 years old and only just passed a recent MOT after a repair to the exhaust. If you would like help us get an electric vehicle please donate (here).

The venue we use for our Meals for the Homeless Project is  Clementswood Community Centre which was started by us over 10 years ago and is well known locally.  Though no longer under British Asian Christian Association’s control we have free access three days a week to continue providing our meals service.

Our Meals for the Homeless Project was one of only few support groups in Redbridge during the first and most difficult lockdown.  Over 65 people visited us two times a day at a time when homeless and economically deprived families found it most hard to get food on their plates. Our work even featured in a BBC News report due to Hannah Chowdhry who founded and led the early project:

You can learn more about the meals for the homeless project in our review (here)

We provide clothes, washing up powder, sanitary items and much more depending on the level of donations received.
T-shirts and Towels and much more given to the most needy.
Some of our volunteer cooks come from the local community, we provide food hygiene training and mentoring.
Even the leader of VHP visits our centre enthused by the many accounts his team have shared.
A new T-shirt with his meal just in time for the incoming warmer weather.
Even with her painful arm Juliet is a force to be reckoned with. She resolves a minor dispute amongst some of the visitors.
Visitors generally queue very early so that they can socialise and share their day with each other.
Occasionally children can be seen in the queue we rush such families to front once we start proceedings.
Most visitors get along but occasionally we have to step in to resolve trivial arguments.
The diversity of our visitors is extremely varied but includes new migrant communities such as Afghans and Ukrainians.
Food is varied and sumptuous we must be doing something right as we have the biggest client base of any food sharing group locally.
Trustee Juliet Chowdhry has a very painful right arm after it was injured during one of our youth events in 2019. She only has 80% of its original mobility but her dedication is an inspiration to us all.
The homeless community have come to know us as friends and we know most of them by name quite quickly.
People come from different backgrounds and many have suffered severe trauma in their lives. We ensure they feel safe, comfortable and that they are all treated fairly and professionally.
Juliet carefully prepares a meal for one of the visitors.

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